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So ends the Comics Curmudgeon Fall 2012 fundraiser. Thank you, generous readers!

Gasoline Alley, 11/16/12

Any hopes of social acceptance for coal-eyed monster Boog — from the cruel attentions of bullies to his prospects of a future mate — hang on the slender thread of his mother’s ability to keep his school — nay, the entire town — stuffed and brain-addled from her carbohydrate-laden snacks. Bake, Hoogie, bake! Bake like you’ve never baked before!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/16/12

Rex Morgan, M.D. plots are notorious for starting from an intriguing premise — Rex and June investigate a brothel — and then larding in so many trivial digressions that readers lose track, and eventually interest. And so we have Honey’s plumbing emergency, Ginger’s stockkeeping crisis, Edna’s heart attack and Herb’s gratitude, June’s free clam lunch (with extra free crab cakes — come back again for more free!), Dolores’s battle with cancer, Nurse Amber Thomas coaxing Rex into a TV spot for CPR training and his consequent public acclaim, Ginger’s Rex-poaching plans and backstory conflicts with the Marine-pilot wife of an former paramour and scheming clamshack waitress Rose. The shame in all this is that when the whole rickety edifice finally collapses in a hail of gunfire or ceremonial award of yet another boat, no one will much notice, let alone care.

Gil Thorp, 11/16/12

Talented and yet somehow Irish footballer Terry Gallagher has let his largely-fictional triumphs on the American gridiron go to his head! Here, the Cool Girls conspire in some vague iPhone-related plot to take him down a peg, because if the stars of the NFL have shown us anything, it’s that a deep and abiding humility is the key to football success.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/16/12

OK so Big Walnut Tech is obviously a Designated Villain in Funky Winkerbean: they routinely crush the Westview Scapegoats in football, and it was team star Frankie who got Dead Lisa pregnant (she was not yet dead at the time), so that Les could heroically give her a lift to the hospital and the Fairviews could get Darrin to adopt. And today Big Walnut Tech bests the Westview High crowd yet again, this time by remote control.

Sounds like a pretty interesting place, doesn’t it, this Big Walnut Tech? I’d like to know more about how their coach managed to maintain a consistently successful football program over so many years, and how they built an academic environment that develops clearly marketable skills in fields like robotics. And what about Frankie? Did he build on his high-school social and athletic successes to become a man of consequence? Were his dreams bigger than Westview?

I like to think of Frankie taking his final box of trophies out to the curb and drawing a last deep breath of Westview air, with its faint smell of bad pizza and flop sweat — then firing up his trusty old van, scene of so many conquests, and driving it down the sad main street out of town forever without a single glance in the rearview.

Judge Parker, 11/16/12

All along, Avery was just looking for a place to hang his hat and park his trout. He would see it clear enough if he took off those ridiculous glasses.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Phantom, 11/10/12

OK, stay with me here. The “panic to keep the modern world at bay” is a bunch of pissy Llongo elders’ plan to undercut their hot queen’s rare-earth mining deal with a story about a vengeful immortal lioness who protects the tribe’s sacred land. The plan requires hardworking Llongo warriors to secretly release a captured lioness near the village, publicly kill her, privately dispose of the carcass, and then go find a matching replacement lioness — repeating the cycle to keep the “immortality” myth going until either they run out of lionesses or the queen relents and shuts down the mine.

The miners’ ace counterplan is to lock the corpse of the next-to-die lioness in a cage, confronting the tricksy elders with steamy, maggot-infested proof of their bad faith, and breaking the cycle. Despite the toll on the poor decomposing lioness, the Phantom is apparently cool with this, since he doesn’t want anybody horning in on his family’s own long-running “mammal-who-can-never-die” scam.

PS. To Wambesi terrorist and Phantom arch-nemesis Chatu “The Python”: before your next attempt on the Phantom’s life, buy a nice strong cage, and maybe some air freshener.

PPS. Have I mentioned how much I like saying “lioness”? No? Lioness, lioness, lioness …

Gasoline Alley, 11/10/12

Despite appearances, this isn’t yet another tiresome “bullying is bad” lesson-comic. Boog’s helicopter mom Clovia smothers him in glurgy mash-notes and three-cupcake lunches to stupefy and fatten him into the image of his father, idiot-whale Slim Skinner. But these three young heroes will have none of it, bravely staging an intervention to keep their pal tough and slender.

Hey, grotesquely-drawn moppets gotta stick together, am I right?

Update — Boog’s mom is Hoogie, not Clovia, and Slim is his grandfather. Other than that, the story was accurate!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/10/12

Did you know that tomorrow is Veterans Day in the U.S.? Snuffy Smith does! And he has every right to join that parade, since he not only shares the nickname of a genuine WWII Army hero, but served in the Army his ownself:

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/24/1941 (panel, courtesy of The Comics Journal)

So what explains Snuffy’s descent from stalwart Defender of Democracy in the 1940’s to the shif’less no-‘count skonk we know and love today? The world’s longest-running case of PTSD? Bone laziness? My money, as always, is on the likker.

Hi there, I’m sitting in for Josh until Sunday, November 18th. You can contact me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net to report any site or comment issues. You can still reach Josh at bio@jfruh.com, but expect sloth-related delays.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Apartment 3-G, 9/15/12

FUN FACT! Did you know that the “Optimists Club” isn’t just a sarcastic thing that Margo calls her roommates because their minds aren’t constantly clouded by intrusive thoughts about murder and carnage? It’s a real fraternal service organization that my grandfather belonged to for years. Also, apparently it was maybe an offshoot of an early 20th century New Age cult? Anyway, long story short, Lu Ann and Tommie can just hang around the apartment in their sweatshirts from the Classic ’70s Kitchen Appliance Colors Collection, but Margo has places to be, people to belittle, etc.

Gasoline Alley, 9/15/12

Despite my longstanding hatred of Slim, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for his wife Clovia. Still, if Clovia needs to fall for a painfully obvious text-scam in order for Slim to be humiliated further, I’m willing to accept that.